Group brings city under the canopy / For 25 years, the Friends of the Urban Forest has planted trees and united San Franciscans to green what was once largely sand dunes

Patricia Yollin, Chronicle Staff Writer

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, November 19, 2006

Photo: Kim Komenich

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Charlie Starbuck (pictured) is a 25-year volunteer with San Francisco's Friends of the Urban Forest. He stands next to the first of 40,000 trees planted in San Francisco by the organization, a glossy privet which was planted in 1981 and grows on 24th near Sanchez.
Photo by Kim Komenich/The Chronicle
**Charlie Starbuck
Ran on: 11-19-2006
Charlie Starbuck stands by a glossy privet on 24th Street near Sanchez Street in Noe Valley, the first tree planted by the Friends of the Urban Forest. Above left, Starbuck tends to a new Bayview planting. less

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Charlie Starbuck (pictured) is a 25-year volunteer with San Francisco's Friends of the Urban Forest. He stands next to the first of 40,000 trees planted in San Francisco by the ... more

Photo: Kim Komenich

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Friends of the Urban Forest volunteer Charlie Starbuck of San Francisco, ties a newly planted tree to its stake as Friends of the Urban Forest volunteers and Quesada Ave. residents take part in tree planting on Quesada Ave. in the Bayview district.
Event on 1/28/06 in San Francisco.
Darryl Bush / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT less

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Friends of the Urban Forest volunteer Charlie Starbuck of San Francisco, ties a newly planted tree to its stake as Friends of the Urban Forest volunteers and Quesada Ave. residents take ... more

Photo: Darryl Bush

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Cities and their Trees. Chronicle Graphic

Cities and their Trees. Chronicle Graphic

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The Forestation of San Francisco. Chronicle Graphic

Group brings city under the canopy / For 25 years, the Friends of the Urban Forest has planted trees and united San Franciscans to green what was once largely sand dunes

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In a quarter-century, Charlie Starbuck has attended more than 1,000 tree plantings in San Francisco. There was the morning that all the new arrivals were named after operas -- "Carmen" and "Rigoletto" were his contributions. And the time that one sapling received an old woman's ashes, while another took root over a young mother's placenta.

"I saw the full cycle of life that day," he said.

Starbuck is a volunteer with Friends of the Urban Forest, a 25-year-old nonprofit that has given the city more than 40,000 trees. The first one -- a glossy privet on 24th Street in Noe Valley -- will be honored soon with a plaque that explains why it's special.

"I'm really surprised it's done so well," said Starbuck, who visited the tree recently. "Somebody had to pay for pruning. And it didn't come down in a winter storm."

The tree, almost three stories high, is flanked by Astrid's Rabat shoe store and Savor restaurant on the block between Noe and Sanchez streets. When it was stuck in the sidewalk on Arbor Day in March 1981, Starbuck was there.

"I grew up in Philadelphia," said the Russian Hill tax attorney. "The trees were all huge and touched each other. When I moved here in 1968, I noticed right away there was a paucity of trees."

Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev realized that as well when he visited San Francisco in the late 1950s.

"He thought it was a very nice city but not enough trees," recalled 90-year-old Ruth Kadish, who served on the group's original board of directors. "So we've changed that, haven't we?"

Friends of the Urban Forest took shape when a similar program run by the city ended because of budget cuts. The organization, located in the Presidio, received more than $1.1 million in revenue and support in 2005. It employs teenagers from low-income districts in an 11-year-old tree-care program and has attracted 40,000 volunteers over the years -- almost one for every tree.

"People who have lived on the same block for 10 or 15 years meet over a tree, and then friendships get formed," said Starbuck, 70, who shows residents what to do at the twice-a-month plantings.

As a result of the plantings and potlucks that follow, some romances have sprouted, an anti-war group once formed and a book came about -- longtime Friends volunteer Michael Sullivan, a venture capital lawyer, wrote "The Trees of San Francisco" in 2004.

"Our primary function is to build community," said Kelly Quirke, 50, the organization's executive director. "We're not just running around sticking trees in the ground."

He said a "catalytic moment" often occurs at the plantings -- events that tend to transform people as well as neighborhoods.

"When you have all these overwhelming things going on in your life, there's a sense of powerlessness," he said. "At a planting, you did more than plant a tree: You got off the couch. What's left behind is a living reminder."

Although the 40,000-plus trees that the group has planted so far exceed the total number in Golden Gate Park, the organization is not resting on its laurels, so to speak.

"As more of us live in cities and as we lose more open space, people are getting more and more of their experience in nature in their urban environment," said Quirke, who is evangelical about trees. "That means the urban forest becomes ever more critical."

Occasionally, Friends of the Urban Forest encounters resistance from residents who fear that arboreal invaders will block feng shui, lead to gentrification or turn into a toilet for dogs. Most of the time, though, trees are not a tough sell, said Quirke, who reeled off a litany of benefits. For starters, they absorb pollutants and storm water, reduce traffic noise and increase property values.

Quirke estimated that almost 700,000 trees live in San Francisco. However, the city's canopy cover is only 12 percent, compared with a national average of 21 percent, according to a study by the Center for Urban Forest Research at UC Davis.

"We weren't a canopied city to start with," said Friends co-founder Isabel Wade, 58, executive director of the Neighborhood Parks Council. "That's something East Coast people never get when they come here. A lot of those East Coast cities were in the woods. Our landscape was sand dunes. We're creating an urban forest. It's not like we lost it -- we never had it."

San Francisco has more canopy cover than San Diego or Tampa, Fla., but pales in comparison to Portland, Ore., at 42 percent, Atlanta at almost 33 percent or even Dallas at 28 percent.

"I'm surprised and then I'm not," said book author Sullivan, 47. "We're probably the most environmentally conscious city in the country. But you'd be surprised how many trees don't get planted or get chopped down because people are trying to preserve their views. And it doesn't rain for six months of the year. Trees have to put up with a lot in San Francisco."

Even Friends veteran Kadish said she was unhappy about a sequoia, planted by a Cole Valley neighbor more than two decades ago, that makes it impossible for her to see St. Ignatius and the Golden Gate Bridge.

"It fills the entire yard, and it's taken away my only view. That doesn't matter -- it's doing nobody any good," said Kadish, former president of the Airport Commission. "The needles fly into everybody's eaves. It's a weed in a city and a beauty in a forest."

Over 25 years, Quirke said, his organization has learned which trees prosper in San Francisco.

Indian laurel figs and ficus trees, heavily planted in the 1980s, have fallen from grace because they heave sidewalks and curbs. Current favorites include the small-leaf tristania, Brisbane box and strawberry tree, said Friends program director Doug Wildman.

In fact, the Noe Valley glossy privet that was the group's first tree is no longer on the organization's "tree menu."

"It's something we don't plant anymore," Starbuck said. "It breaks the sidewalk and its flowers make a mess. People don't want anything that's going to make a mess."

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